Well,
hello, Pensacola! (Applause.) It is great to be here. I want everybody, first of all, to give a big round of applause to Chief Elison Talabong for leading us in the pledge and singing our National Anthem -- (applause) -- to Lieutenant Commander Randy Ekstrom for the wonderful invocation（祈祷，符咒） . (Applause.)I
want to thank your outstanding local leaders for welcoming me here today, including Captains Chris Plummer, Mike Price and Brad Martin. Give them a big round of applause. (Applause.) And your great senior enlisted leaders, including Master Chief Mike Dollen, give them a big round of applause. (Applause.)I
want to thank all the spouses and families who are joining us here today. You hold our military families together, so we honor your service as well.It
is great to be here in Pensacola -- America’s oldest naval（海军的） air station, “the cradle of naval aviation.” We’ve got Navy -- all the students of the Naval Air Technical Training Center. (Applause.) We’ve got Training Wing Six, maybe a few Blue Angels. We’ve got the United States Marines in the house -- (applause) -- maybe a few Air Force and Army, too. (Applause.) Now,
I don’t know how many could be here, because they’re out there on the water right now, responding to the spill -- but I want to thank all the folks at Coast Guard Station Pensacola for their outstanding work. (Applause.) And I know somebody who is especially proud of them, and that’s the former Commandant of the Coast Guard who postponed his retirement to answer his country’s call once more and coordinate the federal response effort to the spill -- and that’s Admiral Thad Allen. Please give him a big round of applause. (Applause.)Now,
I was just down at the Pensacola Beach Gulf Pier, at the Fish Sandwich Snack Bar. Now, I don’t know if any of you ever checked it out. It’s a nice spot. We were there with some of Florida’s state and local leaders to discuss the situation here. I want to acknowledge the hard work that’s being done by the governor of Florida, Charlie Crist; Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Alex Sink; Senators Bill Nelson, George LeMieux, representatives who are here today -- we got Jeff Miller and Corrine Brown and Ted Deutch. Please give them a big round of applause. (Applause.)We’ve
got Escambia County Commissioner Grover Robinson and Pensacola Mayor Mike Wiggins. Thank you very much for your outstanding efforts. (Applause.)I
know all of you join me in thanking these leaders and their communities -- because they’re your neighbors -- for the incredible support that they give all the men and women and your families here in Pensacola. So we’re grateful to you.But
this is my fourth visit to the Gulf Coast since the start of this spill. Yesterday, I was over in Gulfport, Mississippi; Theodore, Alabama; and now Pensacola -- assessing the situation, reviewing the response, seeing what needs to be done better and faster, and talking with folks -- whether fishermen or small business people and their families -- who are seeing their lives turned upside-down by this disaster. Here
in Pensacola, the beautiful beaches are still open. The sand is white and the water is blue. So folks who are looking for a good vacation, they can still come down to Pensacola. People need to know that Pensacola is still open for business. But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t angry. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t scared. That doesn’t mean that people have concerns about the future -- we all have those concerns. And people have every right to be angry.Those
plumes of oil are off the coast. The fishing waters are closed. Tar balls have been coming ashore. And everybody is bracing for more.So
I’ll say today what I’ve been saying up and down the Coast over the last couple of days and over the last month. Yes, this is an unprecedented environmental disaster -- it’s the worst in our nation’s history. But we’re going to continue to meet it with an unprecedented federal response and recovery effort -- the largest in our nation’s history. This is an assault on our shores, and we’re going to fight back with everything we’ve got.
And that includes mobilizing the resources of the greatest military in the world. (Applause.) Here at Naval Air Station Pensacola, you’ve been one of the major staging areas. You’ve helped to support the response effort. And I thank you for that, and I know the people of Pensacola thank you for that. And all along the Gulf coast, our men and women in uniform -- active, Guard, and Reserve -- from across the country are stepping up and helping out.
They’re soldiers on the beaches putting out sandbags and building barriers and cleaning up the oil, and helping people process their claims for compensation from BP. They’re sailors and Marines offering their ships and their skimmers and their helicopters and miles of boom. They’re airmen overhead, flying in equipment and spraying dispersant（分散剂） . And, of course, there are Coast Guardsmen and women on the cutters, in the air, working around the clock.
And when I say this is the largest response of its kind in American history, I mean it. We’ve got more than 5,000 vessels on site -- skimmers（撇油器） , tugs（拖船） , barges（驳船） , dozens of aircraft. More than 27,000 personnel are on the scene, fighting this every day, putting out millions of feet of boom and cleaning the shores.
